slightly and grudgingly, I know that we do too little for it, and expect it, thereupon, to do too much for us. I know that, m other pursuits, it is only work thoroughly well done that is liberally compensated; and I see no reason why farming should prove an exception to this stern but salutary law. I may be, indeed, deficient in knowledge of what constitutes good farming, but not in faith that the very best farming is that which is morally sure of the largest and most certain reward. I hope to be generally accorded the merit of having set forth the little I j^retend to know in language that few can fail to understand. I have avoided, so far as I could, the use of terms and distinctions unfamiliar to the general ear. The little I know of oxygen, hydrogen, nitrogen, &c., I have kept to myself; since whatever I might say of them would be useless to those already acquainted with the elementary truths of Chemistry, and only perplexing to others. If there is a paragraph in the following jDages which will not be readily and fully understood by an average school-'boy oi" fifteen years, then I have failed to make that paragraph as simple and lucid as I intended. Many farmers are dissuaded from following the suggestions of writers on agriculture by the consideration of expense. They urge that, though men of large wealth may (perhaps) profitably do what is recommended, their means are utterly inadequate : they might as well be urged to work 16 WHAT I KNOW OF FAEMING. clover, &c., that it would amply carry that increase. Fifteen years later, he sold out farm and stock for $45,000, and migrated to the "West. I did not understand that he was a specially hard worker, but only a good manager, who kept his eyes wide open, let nothing go to waste, and steadily devoted his energies and means to the improvement of his stock and his farm. "Walking one day over the farm of the late Prof. Mapes, he showed me a field of rather less than ten acres, and said, " I bought that field for $2,400, a year ago last September. There was then a light crop of corn on it, which the seller reserved and took away. I underdrained the field that Fall, plowed and sub-soiled it, fertilized it liberally, and planted it with cabbaoce ; and. when these matured, I sold them for enough to pay for land, labor, and fertilizers, altogether." The field was now worth far more than when he bought it, and he had cleared it within fifteen months from the date of its purchase. I consider that a good operation. Another year, the crop might have been poor, or might have sold much lower, so as hardly to pay for the labor ; but there are risks in other pursuits as well as in farming. A fruit-farmer, on the Hudson above N^ewburg, showed me, three years since, a field of eight or ten acres which he had nicely set with Grapes, in rows ten feet apart, with beds of Strawberries between the rows, from which he assured me that his sales per acre exceeded $Y00 per annum. I presume his out